


a million charming words

by killaidanturner



Category: Being Human (UK), The Almighty Johnsons
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Drug Use, Emotional Hurt, Established Relationship, Growing Old, M/M, Suicide, fragment writing, i mean they love each other in their own fucked up ways, like all the fucking angst you could ever want in your whole entire life, there's no good way to tag it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-03 00:38:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5269994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killaidanturner/pseuds/killaidanturner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mitchell doesn’t know how to make it stop, the inevitable. He never knows how much time he has with Anders, how long this will last. He doesn’t want to say he can’t imagine a life without Anders anymore, so he does it in the form of this question, “what’s going to happen when you’re older?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	a million charming words

**Year One**

 

“What happens when you get old?”

 

“It doesn’t fucking matter.” Anders says it as he takes a swig of his beer.

 

“It does to me.”

 

“Oh for fucks sake, don’t get all sentimental on me.”

 

* * *

 

**Year Three**

 

“There’s no difference between us, you know that right?” Mitchell asks Anders one night after Anders comes home late with the smell of alcohol on his breath.

 

“Fuck you.” Anders pushes past Mitchell and to their bedroom, Mitchell right on his heels.

 

“You have the same fucked up shit going on in your head as I do mine.”

 

“No I don’t, because the difference between you and me is that I’m not coming home with blood in my mouth.” Anders loosens his tie from his neck.

 

All of a sudden he is being pulled forward by it and Mitchell is smashing their lips together, sharp teeth piercing Anders skin. Anders moans into Mitchell’s mouth and grinds himself against him. Mitchell steps back with inky eyes and blood on his lip. He darts his tongue out and licks it away. “Now you do.” He says it cynically and Anders doesn’t know if he should kick him out or fuck him so hard into the mattress that he learns a lesson.

 

Anders opts for the second part with Mitchell's hands tied behind his back, and his moans muffled by a pillow.

 

“Too bad you heal quickly, I’d like to see you covered in marks.”

 

* * *

 

**Year Five**

 

“What’s going to happen?”

 

“Not this shit again. I’ll fucking kick you out if you bring it up one more time.”

 

Mitchell doesn’t know how to make it stop, the inevitable. He never knows how much time he has with Anders, how long this will last. He doesn’t want to say he can’t imagine a life without Anders anymore, so he does it in the form of this question, “what’s going to happen when you’re older?”

 

* * *

 

**Year Ten**

 

“Don’t you think we should talk about it?”

 

“What the fuck is there to talk about? I’ll die, get over it. Then you can go bother someone else with your poor taste in fashion and repeat the cycle. Maybe next time around you won't be getting kicked out of your own place so much.” Anders goes to his fish tank, bending down and lightly tapping on the glass. It's his way of letting Mitchell know he's disinterested in their conversation in the nicest way he can think.

 

“You can be a real fucking prick when you want to be, and it’s not even the slightest bit endearing.”

 

“Then why the fuck have you stuck around John?” Anders turns on Mitchell just so Mitchell can see the defenses building, to see if tonight is a night that Mitchell wants him to build a spire.

 

“Hell if I fucking knew.”

 

The night ends like it has so many times before, with the sound of a door rattling the frame.

 

* * *

 

**Year Thirteen**

 

Sometimes when it’s just the two of them, that their apartment feels like it's their own world. In those moments Mitchell remembers when he was younger, back before this life, back before the war. When he would sit before his mother and she would speak of Jerusalem, of a land so holy that many considered it home, “they built a city and called it Jerusalem, it is here where Jesus was taken and here where it became his home.”

 

He bites back a laugh at this as he looks at Anders who is sunken deep into the couch cushions with a blitzed out look on his face and a glass of liquor in his palms.

 

This definitely isn’t a holy land, but it is home.

 

* * *

 

**Year Fifteen**

 

“Is this your new thing? You want to ruin every single one of my birthdays until I actually die?” Anders has a line of blood dripping out of his left nostril and his pupils are blown wide. He takes his hand and wipes the back of  it across his face, “you know I fucking hate blood.”

 

“I didn’t force you to do a line a coke on your birthday. It’s not my fault you’re getting older, that's just reality pushing down on you. You can’t handle shit the way you used to Anders, when the fuck are you gonna realize it?” They’re in a VIP room at a strip club, black light casting their features in a strange glow. Anders is sitting on the couch with Mitchell standing in front of him.

 

They’re both out of place here. Mitchell looks the same as ever, all sharp angles and dark eyes. He doesn’t look like the other men here, dressed in suits and walking around with an aura or superiority. Anders is different, his face has taken on more lines and his hair is showing strands of gray at the temples. And when he moves his hands Mitchell can see how the veins move underneath the skin, how predominant they’ve become over the last few years. His throat tightens and he looks away.

 

Mitchell wants to tell Anders that he’s tired. That it’s been fifteen years, and yeah he doesn’t mind if every now and then Bragi, or maybe even Anders, needs to fuck somebody else. But as each year passes and more domesticity lays upon them Anders falls back on this. Falls back on easy women, cheap tricks, and so many fucking drugs that Mitchell is honestly impressed Anders is still alive.

 

“When you stop fucking nagging me like you’re somebody important.” Anders narrows his eyes, challenging Mitchell. It’s another brick laid around him. Every time Mitchell thinks he’s torn one down, two more are in it’s place.

 

“You know what? I don’t fucking care anymore, do every goddamn line on that tray if you want, at least if you overdose I’ll be free from this.” The words are biting and a part of Mitchell wishes he could take them back, but the other part of him that is clawing at his throat wants to be the one to take the last breath from the man before him. To watch his blue eyes turn as still as ice. Mitchell lets his eyes grow dark before he turns around walks out.

 

* * *

 

The sixteenth year is spent apart. It’s spent with cold nights, long nights, and so many people in their lives that none of their names matter. Anders drowns himself more than he ever has, he makes sure that every night his sheets are never cold. And Mitchell, Mitchell stopped learning names of people after Anders, of strangers in pubs, people he bumped into on city streets. He knew none of them would matter, that none of them would be important the way that Anders was. He just never would tell the prick that, “forbid that shit goes straight through his fucking thick skull.” Mitchell says out loud as he drops a cigarette on the ground and crushes out the embers with his boot.

 

He looks at his boots, with their scuff marks and their untied laces and all he can imagine is them on a coffee table and a, _“get your fucking dirty boots off the table. You’ve probably been wearing them since the 80s and I can’t even begin to imagine what they’ve seen.”_

 

And when Mitchell returns its with blood on his hands and to open arms.

 

* * *

 

**Year Twenty**

 

“I’m waiting for you to pull out your back, you’re still fucking like you’re twenty-one.”

 

“Are you complaining?” Anders looking the same as ever, all taut skin and a sharp tongue.

 

“Far from it.”

 

If someone were to ask Mitchell why they’ve stayed together all these years he wouldn’t say it was just the sex, though he knows that would be Anders answer. It was how they understood each other. That Anders didn't pass judgement when Mitchell came home with tears in his eyes and someone else's blood on his hands. It was how Mitchell could take what Anders could throw at him and how Anders built walls that only Mitchell could climb.

 

* * *

 

**Year Twenty-Three**

 

“What do you want to do tonight?” Mitchell asks pulling Anders up from the couch by his hands and running them down his sides.

 

“Let’s just stay in.” Anders says with a yawn as he leans his head on Mitchell’s chest. Mitchell starts swaying them slowly back and forth.

 

“Getting old are we?” Mitchell tries to say it lightly.

 

“Fuck off. Let’s just get lit and stay in, I don’t feel like dealing with anyone right now.” Anders doesn’t know how to say, _‘I just want to spend tonight with you.’_

 

* * *

 

**Year Twenty-Nine**

 

Bragi sure as hell never gets tired of Mitchell the way that Anders does. There’s been more times than he can count here he wanted nothing more than for Mitchell to just fuck off but Mitchell would talk and it would soothe Bragi.

 

The crescendo in his voice when he would tell a story, the hush of his whispers when needed. How his tone could come across melodic and lulling to Bragi.

 

It made Anders want to punch Mitchell.

 

Instead at times he found himself asking for a story.

 

“I’ve already told you that one.” Mitchell replied scrunching up his nose a bit.

 

“Yeah, but I don’t mind hearing it again.” Maybe it wasn’t always Bragi that wanted to hear him, though he would never admit it.

 

* * *

 

**Year Thirty**

 

For the god of poetry Anders thinks he’s been wasting a lot of his fucking time. He kind of regrets it in a way, that he was never actually good at it. He looks at Mitchell, in his youthful state and for a moment thinks that if anyone deserves poetry about them it would be Mitchell.

 

He doesn’t voice this, if he did it would come across harsh and with comments about gray vests and a tight ass in skinny jeans instead, and how Mitchell’s lips look swollen with Anders cock in his mouth.

 

He wouldn’t even know what the fuck to say.

 

He guesses it would be something along the lines of, _'here is a secret: I want you here as much as you want to be here.'_

 

He finishes his vodka in one more gulp, and he tries not to let his eyes rest on Mitchell who has found an old movie on TV.

  


* * *

 

**Year Thirty-Five**

 

At night Mitchell counts their years together like beads on a rosary and prays that Anders doesn't ask for them back.

  
  


* * *

 

**Year Forty**

 

Anders doesn’t talk about the year Mitchell left. They both avoid it like it's a monster in the closet. Even though it's been over twenty years since it happened Anders thinks at times that he’s still trying to make Mitchell pay for it.

 

That he’s pulling up old arguments like their artifacts, he’s an archaeologist and each year is just an exhibit.

 

He imagines standing in front of a gold frame, with a gold plaque underneath it and a small engravement saying _‘The Sixteenth Year’_ a frame shot of two people on separate sides of the world and the chasm between them.

 

He tells Bragi to shut the fuck up, _besides Mitchell wouldn’t show in a photo._

 

* * *

 

**Year Forty-Five**

 

It starts slowly, little things like forgetting where he places his keys or if he had dropped something off at the cleaners.

 

Then his memories start to blur, start to become fuzzy and that is when he starts to wonder. He’ll see Mitchell, see his perfectly framed face and think to himself, _‘I swear his eyes weren’t always that shade.’_ That they didn’t always look so piercing. There’s memories where they’re softer and don’t look like they’re out to ruin. That’s when Anders knows things are slipping from him.

 

* * *

 

**Year Forty-Nine**

 

“Do you want me to start telling you about us at night, like read to you?” Mitchell asks as he’s laying in bed next to Anders. He has his head pillowed on his hands as he looks at Anders who has his eyes closed. Mitchell can see the veins in his eyelids and traces them in his memory.

 

“Fuck no, this isn’t 'The Notebook', I haven’t lost my memory yet.” When Anders falls asleep that night it’s with his hand in Mitchell’s and the doctors words playing over in his ears, _“it’s alzheimer's, you’ll start forgetting and eventually you won't be able to live without assisted living.”_

* * *

 

**Year Fifty-One**

 

Anders doesn’t know how to say, _‘thanks for sticking around.’_ So he shows him by watching Laurel and Hardy with Mitchell one night and saying, “I think I finally get why you like it so much.”

 

* * *

 

**Year Fifty-Three**

 

Anders lets Mitchell tell him about them, sometimes Mitchell changes a scene, something small that had happened. Sometimes Anders catches onto it and calls Mitchell a prick.

 

And sometimes he doesn’t, sometimes a new memory will form with the scene that Mitchell is playing out and Anders will say, “I remember that, that was a good day.” It’s when Mitchell starts to realize how serious it is, the gravity of the situation. He stops altering memories after that, not wanting Anders to have any false recollections about them. But at night sometimes Mitchell is tempted to say, _‘you told me you love me’,_ just to see if Anders would agree.

 

* * *

 

**Year Fifty-Five**

 

Sometimes Anders is how he always was, young and feeling more like a god than anyone deserves. Some days it's just like being in their apartment and Anders is in the kitchen pouring a glass of vodka and telling Mitchell he looks fucking awful and _'can you take off those fucking gloves when we're inside?'_ And some days he doesn't remember Mitchell at all, and Mitchell struggles to see Anders in the hard lines etched into his features. Mitchell wonders if he wasn't around if the lines would be as prominent or if he had some doing in them. The wrinkles around his eyes, how they seem so weary and ready to give up. It's in those moments when he's trying to find Anders that he realizes this is the last time he can do this.

 

* * *

 

**Year Fifty-Seven**

 

Mitchell spent his life trying to redeem himself. He had others whispering to him of atonement, that he could be forgiven if he would just _try._ It was different with Anders, he never had to worry about those things. Never had to beg for forgiveness for his past, never had to explain his actions. There was no penance, no prayers that needed to be said between them.

 

He had found solace with Anders, found it in the way that Anders never was looking for redemption either.

 

“If you want someone who is going to hold your hand and tell you that it’s all going to be ok, that you’ll get better, you might as well leave now cause it sure as fuck isn’t going to be me.”

 

Mitchell had grabbed Anders after that, kissing him with bruising force. He didn’t know how to say, ' _that’s what makes you different and that’s why I love you.'_

 

And when Mitchell killed and he came home covered in blood Anders would shut down, he would fight back the bile in his throat but he never turned Mitchell away. He would silently toss Mitchell’s clothes in the bin while Mitchell was in the shower and tried not to think of how Mitchell looked with blood matted in his hair.

 

It was how those moments became fewer and far between, it was because Anders never tried to change him that Mitchell began changing on his own anyway.

 

He would never find another Anders, not in this life.

 

“I’m sorry, he passed away in his sleep last night when a nurse was checking on him.” Mitchell is nodding his head as the doctor is speaking to him. He hears the words but they’re becoming muffled and distant. “He was talking in his sleep, he was repeating a name over and over according to the nurse.” It’s enough to pull Mitchell out of his haze.

 

“What was that?”

 

“He was repeating a name, but we haven’t heard him say it before, I don’t know if it means anything to you.”

 

“What was it?”

 

“John.”

 

Mitchel lets out a laugh, it rips through his chest and comes out barking. He places his hand to the back of his mouth.

 

“I guess you must have known him then.” The doctor says looking at Mitchell who is fighting back tears.

 

“Yeah, I knew John.”

 

* * *

 

Mitchell goes back to where it all started, to a pub in a seedy part of town. It wasn’t Anders normal haunt but something had drawn him that day to stop here, to change up his routine to see if anything interesting happened.

 

“I don’t know, I wanted a drink and wanted to see what the women in that part of town looked like. Wanted to see if anything interesting would happen.” Anders had shrugged it off years later when Mitchell had asked him why he was at that bar.

 

“And yet you got me.” Mitchell laid back on the bed with his arms spread behind his head and smug grin spreading across his features.

 

“And how I regret it every day.” Anders had kissed him after that, softly and with purpose. Mitchell always figured that was Anders way of saying, _'I love you.'_

 

He looks at the dark trim and the dim lighting and remembers their first meeting like it was yesterday. He remembers Anders hands, how they traced up his thigh. He remembers how for a moment his chest didn’t ache, for a moment he had forgotten the dark thoughts that seemed to be on a permanent loop in his head.

 

He thinks now that no one will hold him the way Anders did, with sometimes cruel intentions. That no one will fight with him the same, or try to put him in his place. That no one will kiss his knuckles after they had just killed someone, or run their hands through his hair when they think he’s asleep, or trace patterns across his skin the same. How Anders would connect the marks on Mitchell’s skin and try to pretend they were Norse constellations, it always ended with Mitchell calling him a shit liar and Anders blaming the entirety of his actions on Bragi.

 

Mitchell lets out a deep breath he doesn’t really need, he figures it's the humanity of the action. “You better fucking be wherever I’m headed.” Mitchell whispers the words as he positions a piece of wood in the center of his chest, his knuckles gripped tightly around it. He tries not to think about the countless times before this where he had attempted this same action or plotted it out in his mind. He was always selfish back then, he knows he has no reason to be selfish now.

 

The steak drives through his ribs, crunches past bones and hits its target. He can feel the splintering wood for a fraction of a second before everything is gone.

 

* * *

 

 

When he wakes next it is with familiar hands reaching for him and sunlight pouring in.

 

**Author's Note:**

> ummmm this idea spawned so I sat down and wrote it and now it's 1am and this is the first Britchell I've ever written so I hope I didn't budge it up too badly.
> 
> I'm also no longer posting stuff in the middle of the night anymore in my delirium because I always catch errors the next day, sorry if you read this before I read over it
> 
> you can follow me on tumblr at [killaidanturner](http://killaidanturner.tumblr.com/)


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